Um Festival em Cannes

Sorry that some fans didn't care for this film, I found it deliciously decadent and oh-so-painfully-truthful! It had all the schmaltz and flavor of a run down fan dancer. So delicate at one time, and now so abused. If you really desire to see the Festival as it is, then view this movie. Mr. Schell is excellent, as well as the gentleman that plays the sleeze-ball Kaz. Truly a remarkable film in that it makes you think/feel documentary. Ala Robert Altman and his unscripted dialogue. The audience in my theatre snickered half the film, and there were some real good laughs at some of the irony. Only drawback was the cameraman. He gave us a splitting headache whenever filming Ms. Aimee and Mr. Schell on the boardwalk. Otherwise, go see it. Enjoy!

Henry Jaglom, who knows his way around movie deal-making from the inside, made a vicious thrust at the film industry, located at Cannes with an all-star cast and a wealth of cameos. Critics who panned this brilliant non-lampoon missed the point. If movie nuts (like myself) ever entertained fantasies of making a big time film, Henry Jaglom's satire will cure them.

I went in expecting nothing since all I"d ever seen of HJ was about a half hour, as much as I could stand, of "Always" a really unbearable movie, starring him, of the lovesick clueless guy somehow had gorgeous girlfriend and now shall mope for 90 minutes and she thinks he's cute even now for some mysterious reason even though it's over while the audience well, simply has to endure him, variety.

Anyway I thought it was pretty great this movie, really well plotted, I liked the actresses in particular: anouk, gretta and the girl who played "Blue". . . they were all really wonderful. The characters were vividly drawn and I thought it was a really well written human comedy.

What I would encourage him to do in the future however is to try something other than a score that shows your movie as being a knock off of woody allen or gives that feeling, which this music did. The film would have seemed a lot more his own had he had a different sound to go with.

As a long-time fan of Henry Jaglom, I'd have to put Festival in Cannes slightly behind his last couple of films, the wonderful "Deja Vu" and "Last Summer in the Hamptons." His work is definitely not to everyone's taste -- none of his characters is free of either self-absorption or self-destructiveness -- but those who don't need clear heroes and villains are well-rewarded with psychologically complex and often highly comic portrayals.

This is more in the spirit of "Venice/Venice" and his earlier, more confessional films with the difference being that Henry's not onscreen. Still, his longtime collaborator Zack Norman gives his best performance ever, Anouk Aimee and Maximilian Schell fully embody both the mystery and deluded romanticism they're meant to evoke and a fine array of new faces (especially Alex Craig Mann and the two female writer/producers) step up to Jaglom's "process" and execute it more seamlessly than ever before. Henry's somewhat distracting habit of arhythmic cross-cutting within dialogue scenes has been almost completely cured -- "Festival" has gorgeous long takes that allow the scenes to completely develop their internal tensions. The production values are also the best ever for one of his films; he and his crew really conveyed the spirit of a festival that is really a market.

My main quibble is that his ending is not as satisfying as those of his last films; it, too, harks back to the looser wrap-ups of his earlier work -- even a bit more certainty about the resolution of a couple of the storylines would have helped this feel a little grander in conception.

In Cannes, the actress Alice Palmer (Greta Scacchi) wants to have her debut in the cinema industry as director and her two friends have written a screenplay to Gena Rowlands. However they are approached by the counterfeit crasher Kaz Naiman (Zack Norman) that convince them to rewrite the scrip to the famous French actress Millie Marquand (Anouk Aimée) that is in the festival; in return he would sponsor the feature with three million dollars. Millie loves the screenplay and promises to make the film. However, the powerful producer Rick Yorkin (Ron Silver) is producing a blockbuster with Tom Hanks and Simone Duvall and needs Millie Marquand and needs Millie Marquand to perform the role of Tom Hanks' mother. Millie's former husband, the director Viktor Kovner (Maximilian Schell) is in Cannes and Rick manipulates him to convince Millie to accept the part. Meanwhile the promising debutant star Blue (Jenny Gabrielle) becomes a hit in the festival but is divided between her lover and her career.

"Festival in Cannes" is almost a good movie. The idea of shooting in the backstage of the Cannes Film Festival 1999 like in a documentary is creative and interesting. However, the naiveness of the characters like Blue, Alice Palmer and Millie Marquand associated to the verbose screenplay are bothersome in the end of 100 minutes running time. Further, Maximilian Schell is awful and the ham Zack Norman is totally unconvincing. This movie was released on VHS by Paramount distributor in Brazil. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Um Festival em Cannes" ("A Festival in Cannes")